


Witness In the Stone

by innate_fifth, Kunabee



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, BDSM, F/F, F/M, Heavy Bondage, Multi, PTSD, Past Child Abuse, Sadomasochism, Slavery, Trauma Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:40:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23474101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innate_fifth/pseuds/innate_fifth, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kunabee/pseuds/Kunabee
Summary: Avra Soul’s death is not the end of her life. Instead, she is transformed and transported to another world. She doesn’t have long to learn how this strange new place works before fate takes her in its grip. Although wary of this new world, she cannot stand idly by while someone is assaulted. For the apparentlytreasonousact of showing compassion to a stranger, she is made a slave.With mysterious nightstone obelisks that only Avra can see and a master who is not what he seems, she has to navigate an entirely different world while dealing with her own trauma and trying to stay true to herself.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Witness In the Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Ongoing roleplay. Also known as "There's No Sex Only Foreplay" because it was originally supposed to be a light-hearted smutty isekai and somehow we ended up here.
> 
> This is not for the faint of heart. The warnings on this are no joke. It deals with healing from trauma, PTSD, child abuse, self-harm, suicidal ideation, physical punishments, etc, etc. It’s a rough story. But it’s also a hopeful story. At the end of the day, the good guys win. Love triumphs over hate. Loneliness turns into finding family. Read at your own pace. Be mindful of your triggers. And thank you for reading. - Kunabee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Avra arrives in a new world, and thankfully meets someone nice. Not so thankfully, she almost immediately runs into trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can tell it was supposed to be light-hearted because of the chapter title.

The whole situation was kind of shit - a quick getaway, a new town with about five dollars to her name and she was _late_ to her first day on the job. Mentally running up a checklist of cussing, Avra wasn't paying near enough attention to her surroundings. Black hair was cropped short, the slightest bit of curl to her bob as she strode through crowded city streets. Almost there, almost there - she needed a car, damnit, but walking would have to do until she could afford a vehicle. This was the problem with burning all your bridges: sometimes, you were left with nothing but a rising tide.

There was a loud honking as she crossed the road; she half-turned but it was far too late. Everything went dark.

Her head pounded when she woke up. She didn't remember what happened, but - eh, yeah. She got hit by a car. A truck? It didn’t matter. She was probably in the hospital now. So much for her new job. God, this bed was _uncomfortable_. She squinted her eyes open, sunlight assaulting them as she looked up into... blue sky. Okay. That was... weird. An outdoor hospital? Maybe she was still on the pavement, that would explain why the bed felt so damn uncomfortable. Maybe she just got a little scraped up? Could be. As she sat up, any illusions of that faded. Her hands brushed over grass, and... she was in a field. Lovely. Great. GRAND!

Other than her head, she wasn't really sore. Avra looked down, and... okay, she'd never been fat, but her legs were definitely skinnier than before, her stomach flatter. No change in the size of her breasts - B cups - so that was fine and normal. Her hair fell over her shoulder, a cascade that was longer than it should have been. What the fuck. And then she felt her ear twitch.

Her hands slowly rose up along her head, brushing past where her ears _should_ be but weren’t, and then at the top - two cat ears. That she could touch. And hear with. Panic began to build in her, and she took deep, steadying breaths. Okay. Okay. This was freaky, but... it was probably just a dream, right? A drug-induced dream because they wheeled her to the hospital after she got hit by a car because she was stupid. They'd be sad because she had no visitors but she was going to wake up.

Unless she was in a coma. Oh God. Looking back on it, she should have noticed she was wearing a sack of a dress instead of her professional clothes or even a hospital gown. But now she was in a shapeless piece of cloth that barely covered her. Why didn't that register? Oh, right - because this was a dream, and logic had no place in dreams. Right, okay, she was fine. She had to be fine.

She took a deep breath and felt another part of her body twitch. Only, unlike her ear, she had nothing to compare this to - she just felt it move. She reached out blindly to it and grasped... a tail. It was the same black as her hair, shiny and smooth and soft, and it was... hers, somehow. She had a tail.

"What the fuck," she whispered, speaking into this... new world... at last. This was a crazy dream. Avra was asleep after the car had hit her, and she was going to wake up in a few hours and forget all about the dream and it would be fine. She was just lucid dreaming now. Which meant she could change things. A... a field was fine for now. She was fine. She was FINE.

"Why the _fuck_ do I have a tail, though?" she muttered aloud. Was it to go with the ears? Why would she dream of herself with cat ears and a cat tail?

The sounds of heavy footfalls and creaking wood began to intrude on her alarmed self-reflection. It took her a bit of time to get accustomed to her new ears before she could discern which direction the sounds were coming from. She looked around at a picturesque scene, complete with rolling hills of green grass, a bright, clean sky, clear but for a distant puffy white cloud or two, and a lonely dirt road meandering off into the distance. There, on the road, was the source of the sound.

A wooden cart, laden with leather-covered containers made its way slowly toward the hillside where Avra sat. It was being drawn by a pair of the most unusual animals Avra had ever seen. They resembled extra-large llamas, but had small, reversed horns on their heads. Their legs looked thick and sturdy; not at all like the long, gangly legs of the llamas she was familiar with. The figure driving the cart resolved into view as they drew closer. An older man, dressed in neutral shades of brown and light gray, and wearing a wide-brimmed hat, lazily sipped from a water skin with his free hand, letting the not-quite-llamas follow the road at a leisurely pace.

As the cart came within a comfortable distance, it seemed like the man would continue driving straight past Avra without even taking notice of her. But just as he was about to pass he drew up the reins and brought the cart to a stop. He turned a wrinkled and sun-dried face to address Avra.

"You lost, young lady?" asked the man in a scratchy, old voice. "Must be two days' walk to anywhere from here, even cuttin' through the wood."

She stared. Of course, she stared; the... llama-creatures were such a strange thing. She just blinked slowly, for a moment, then looked up at the man.

Somewhere, in her heart of hearts, she knew this wasn't a dream. A mind as clever as hers could only live on self-delusion for so long. But she was genre-savvy, too, and so she played it like a story her sleeping mind would evoke.

"Um, yes," she said, awkward as she grasped one arm with the other hand. "Very lost, actually. Um." In her world, in her wakeful state, she would avoid the stranger and take her chances. But he didn't seem bad and she needed help and knowledge. But... all subtle-like. Telling someone ‘hey, I’m pretty sure from another world, so what’s this world called and what the fuck is driving your cart’ was probably a _horrible_ idea.

"Um," she said again, cringing inwardly at her overuse of the not-word 'um', "If... if it's not too much trouble, mind if I, uh - that is, would it be alright if I hitch a ride with you to wherever you're going? At least until the next town?"

Avra silently and sarcastically congratulated herself on her eloquence and the fact that she used 'uh' instead of um.

"Well, I s'pose you don't seem like any bandit I ever seen. And I'd eat my hat if you weighed half as much as one o' my ... erm, crates." The man's eyes narrowed slightly. "I don't s'pose you're carryin' any money."

Suspicion probably would have served her better than naive trust. That rule was the same in any world, she supposed. He was certainly suspicious of her, and he had good reason to be. "...no. No money," she said awkwardly.

The old man sighed. "No, I didn't 'spect so. I'll tell you what. You keep an old feller company and help with the campfire an' cookin', and I'll let you ride along for free. Oh, and no complainin'."

"I'm happy to cook, yeah," Avra agreed softly, climbing up next to him. "And I don't have much right to complain if you're doing this for me, do I?" Her tail twitched, as did her ears, both responding to her mood in a way that felt utterly foreign to her.

With a snap of the reins, the old man set the cart in motion and they rolled along the dirt road in no particular hurry. As it happened, Avra scarcely needed to worry about providing the old man company. He must have been quite lonely traveling on his own for days at a time. Now that he had an ear to listen to him, the man talked incessantly and joyfully about whatever seemed to cross his mind.

His name, as it turned out, was Albert and he was a merchant of sorts. He carried spices and rare foodstuffs that kept well between three or four of the major settlements in the area. Avra learned from him that business had been good lately, owing to warmer and wetter weather for the last two seasons. Albert had eyesight problems, and would have liked to retire, but his family had debts that needed to be paid and no other source of income. He hoped to introduce his wares to a wealthy noble in a town further along his route, as it might prove profitable enough to cover his debts.

Along the road, the scenery shifted slowly as the day wore on. The terrain grew a bit flatter and gave way to plains and fields. They stopped for the night next to a small stream and a stand of delicate, dark-barked trees. Albert produced a side of spiced meat and showed Avra where she could dig to find some kind of wild onion along the banks of the stream. It wasn't difficult to cook, but with Albert unwilling to sacrifice any of his spices for the meal, it was never going to be a gourmet special.

Cooking had always come naturally to Avra, however, so even without the spices she managed something at least half-decent. To be honest, she was a little proud of herself. She was used to having whatever ingredients she wanted at her fingertips, where the only obstacle was that some things were expensive. She only had a small amount of things to work with and not really any kind of spices for it. But despite that, she managed to make a pleasant meal that both she and Albert could both enjoy.

Albert certainly seemed to savor the meal, and Avra's company. By the time Avra found a silence long enough that she thought to give Albert some version of her own history, he had sunk into a restful slumber against a tree. Now that he was asleep, the catgirl turned towards self-reflection and consideration of what she had learned today. She wondered if Albert had noticed her ears (black on black) with his poor eyesight, or if it was simply something he didn’t care about. That thought led to thinking about his debt. Apparently debt was ubiquitous - were she at home, awake, whatever, she'd have to be worrying about the debt from a hospital stay...

It was sad, she thought. Albert was terribly lonely, and he had truly savored her very simple meal. It made Avra feel conflicted things that she didn’t quite understand, a million nameless emotions that sort of _hurt_ deep inside. She was also grateful he had fallen asleep so quickly. It meant that she had just enough time to think out a backstory, one that was the truth slightly altered. At last, she settled onto the cold ground, curling up in on herself, and found that sleep came surprisingly easy.

Morning brought leftovers of the night before, onions and meat mixed together in a shoddy stir fry, but she ate it without complaint just as she had promised. She longed for variety, for decent cooking utensils, but she was on the road and in a world different from her own. Whatever she had to deal with, she would. As they ate, she finally shared the backstory she had come up with.

"I'm Avra, like I said,” she began without much preamble. “I wish I had a good relationship with my family, but... it was better to burn bridges than to not. I had an opportunity for a job, got lost, and now I've probably lost the job." She sighed, the frustration of it honest.

Morning brought more than the offer of her story as she sat in the cart again, watching the two not-llamas walk. It was also a realization. If she really was dreaming, she would have woken up in a hospital bed. Did she die? Was this the afterlife? Or had some mischievous faerie or god whisk her away to another world, changing her appearance just enough that she was different but not enough to be unrecognizable? Yesterday she had been cheerful and bright, if a little serious and involved with her own thoughts; today she was in an entirely somber mood, trying not to think about everything she was thinking about... everything she _needed_ to think about.

As the cart continued on, the surroundings continued their gradual shift. Before long, it was no longer wild, grassy plains but organized and tended farmland that greeted Avra’s newly enhanced senses.

Onions. Avra smelled onions from the fields. Having a much more sensitive nose was clearly not always going to be easy or pleasant.

In the distance, slowly rising on the horizon, the unmistakable right-angles of civilized habitation rose steadily and resolved into individual buildings and a city wall. Its gate came straight out of a fantasy movie, and the guards who oversaw Albert and Avra’s entry were not there for show. After suffering the inspection, they drove toward the center of town, past disorganized rows of houses, stores, and at least two granaries. When they arrived at a market toward the center of town, Albert bid Avra farewell.

“This is your stop, I s’pose, young lady. The fine town of Kios.” he said pleasantly. “I hope you find the way after bein’ lost.” He sounded sincere, as if he really did wish he knew of some other way to help. Or at least as if losing a traveling companion who didn’t mind his stories and complaints was a real wretch.

Avra thanked the man, nodding. "I’m sure I'll find it just fine," she reassured him despite having no clue what she was going to do now. But being in a city was better than being in the wilderness, so...

Well, she figured the first order of business was to find a job. Her nose practically stung with an array of scents, noise a cacophony for her overly-sensitive ears. There were sights and sounds enough to make her dizzy.

She took a deep breath and gathered herself, moving forward and observing for now. She would learn and manage, in time, and - and figure out something.

Avra would not fall apart.

As she made her way through the market, she noticed yet more things foreign to her experience. Even setting aside the array of unfamiliar produce and curious wares being peddled, there were the people. If Avra had any concerns that she would stand out with cat ears and a tail in this place, they were gone now.

Half human/half animal people of every conceivable shape, size, and color mingled with the otherwise normal human beings on the streets. Here went a bear-man bouncer, a half-horse fish hocker. It was almost a gibberish of strange new kinds of people. It kind of reminded Avra of Comiccon.

As she rounded a corner onto a new row of stalls, she heard a crash. When she turned to look, she saw a small half-human, half skunk(?) standing over a cracked crate of goods. He was barely as tall as Avra’s ribs, and his puffy, striped tail was nearly as big as the entire upper half of his body. He quickly dropped to his hands and knees and attempted to gather the broken pieces of crockery that had tumbled out of the crate, but a hand reached out and grabbed his collar.

“Clumsy FOOL!” yelled the voice belonging to the hand. He looked like a wolf-man -- a werewolf maybe? “That’s the second time this week you’ve broken my property!” The wolf-man lifted the poor demiskunk by his shirt and backhanded him in the face. A few of the nearest people looked over to see the commotion, but nobody made any move to intervene.

Very strongly, very intensely, Avra did not want to intervene. She didn't want any bit of the fight. But - nobody else was. They were all standing there... letting someone be hit over a mistake. Items were not worth as much as people.

Her breath was hard to catch, molasses making her move slowly. Smell and sound and light was an infinite replay, senses that weren't hers in a body that wasn't hers in a world that wasn't hers.

Deep breath. Time caught up with her and she spoke up, ears flat on her head. "Ex... excuse me, sir?" Her voice trembled, but she forced it into shape as she continued speaking. "If it's a bother, think it's best to... to fire? or avoid him or get authorities or whatever else you need to do. Hitting him is uncalled for. And - and maybe you'd say it's none of my business, but I do think it's my business when I see someone attacking someone else. Because regardless of perceived or actual slights - that isn't right. Surely you must know that?"

Her head felt heavy and light at the same time, but she stayed there all keyed up and hoped she wasn't causing herself too much trouble.

The wolf-man eyed Avra (and she felt the eyes of many others on the street on her as well) and held the demiskunk up closer. “You think it’s best for me to fire this useless meatsack?”

Her mind whirled as she thought of things. "I don't know what's best. I just know that _beating him up_ is... is wrong. There are other ways to handle problems." Avra hoped she didn't fuck up.

The wolf-man seemed to consider this for a moment, while the demiskunk clung to the wolf-man’s hairy hand. “You’re right,” he laughed, “he’s not worth the _effort_!” With that, he dropped the demiskunk into a pile on the street. “You’re fired. Get lost.” The wolf-man walked off, ignoring the damaged crate and goods. The demiskunk didn’t move right away.

 _That could have gone better_ , she thought vacantly. She stared, for a moment, then moved down with a small flinch as she stood next to the demiskunk.

"I am... so sorry," she said empathetically, tensed and stiff and wanting to run away. "I didn't mean to - to draw so much attention. I just saw him hitting you, and..." She trailed off, beginning to gather the broken things.

She thought of the Japanese - what was it, kintsugi? Yes, that sounded right. The kintsugi, filling in cracks with gold. She thought of broken people with sad histories, and lonely people who wanted to retire. These things in the crate were broken and abandoned... but she was certain she could use them.

"...are you alright?" Avra asked the skunk, voice tender.

He rolled onto his front and pushed himself upright, turning away from Avra. When he spoke, his voice was deeper and scratchier than she would have guessed. “I didn’t ask for your help, lady. Next time, don’t get involved.” He walked away, holding one hand to his face.

"Sorry," she whispered again, the heavy weight of having fucked up settling over her. It didn't feel like she was being watched, so she took the crate of broken goods and wondered. He probably had a family. She probably just, really badly...

She thought about the massive man picking up the much smaller one. There was no mercy there. She thought about the fact nobody else did anything. Kintsugi. She was in another world, and...

Fuck. She blinked back tears as she slid into an alleyway, sitting down and bowing her head over the crate of goods in her lap. The tears slid. She didn't sob, it wasn't even really crying... she just let the tears fall and tried not to think about what _everything meant_.

After a while, she got herself together. She couldn't sit there and be useless. She had... a crate of broken goods. She was in a city. She was hungry. Oh, yeah - her stomach growled again, grumbling in its emptiness. Hunger was... fine, for now.

She wasn't an artist, but she was practical. She began to go through the crate. What did she have to work with, here?

The contents of the crate seem to have been mostly ceramic plates. Every one of them shattered on impact, though some of them were in larger pieces than others. They were stylistically plain, but given the society that apparently produced them, they were remarkably uniform. They may have been worth something -- before they were destroyed, that is.

There’s also a cracked bowl and a very small pot that somehow survived intact.

She had a pot! She was excited by this and realized how far she had fallen. And a cracked bowl. If she had some paint and glue she could make a mosaic. If she had some cloth she could use plates as knives. If she had... something besides broken crockery, she could do something with this.

Avra took a deep breath. She could collect water with the pot. She could rip some of her clothes to make a shard into a knife-type thing. She had the crate, too. She could...

Fuck. She needed to figure out some way to get a job. She needed money. She needed food. She needed other materials to do anything with what she had.

So she worked herself back to standing, rubbing her back a moment. Avra did rip some cloth off of her shapeless and messy dress, wrapping it around a shard. She tucked the crate of broken goods away, made note of the alley, and started walking, taking the makeshift knife with her

Okay. Jobs. She did IT. There wasn’t IT here. But you didn't have to be trained to be a waitress and surely there were inns and taverns. She silently and quickly scraped the pottery shard on walls, making sure to give herself a small and subtle way to locate the alley where she stashed the broken goods.

It was... totally weird to be attached to them. But they were something grounding. Kintsugi. She was a broken plate and someday, somehow, she would fix herself and be better than before. So now she was alone in a city, trying to keep track of the streets, looking for an inn or a tavern or anything that seemed remotely like she could get a job there.

And some food. Food was good.

Perhaps by the smell of freshly cooked food, or by the sounds of rowdy drunks, Avra was able to find not one, but two distinct taverns in relatively short order. The first was altogether too sketchy and well-armed for her to be comfortable doing anything more than peeking in through the window. The second, however, was bustling with exactly the right mix of high-volume celebration and impatient calls for more ale. There was a crude rendition of a fat, happy pig holding a flagon of ale carved on a wooden sign that hung above the door. It seemed exactly like the kind of place she’d had in mind.

It didn’t really help that Avra’s entrance was far from unnoticed. More than a few whistles and yips rose to greet her as she came in through the front door. If someone had touched her, Avra would have shown that she was not someone to be molested. Luckily, they didn't do more than look and whistle. She could deal with that. She was a woman; looks and whistles were as much a part of life as breathing. Assault was different. But whatever had this crowd in such a good mood to begin with soon stole back their attention and allowed Avra to proceed unmolested to the bar.

Although she had no way of knowing at the time, many who first visited assumed that the purveyor of the Jolly Sow was a demipig. In fact, however, Madam Bursina was a heavy-set, energetic, high-spirited human in her forties. And tonight, she had far too much to do. Too much ale to serve, too many tables to bus, too much food to prepare. Avra had no idea if she was the owner or a waitress, but she was the closest lead the hu - _catgirl_ had. So she started to walk with the busy human, doing her best to get the woman’s attention. However, Madam Bursina took no notice of Avra as she shuffled plates, pints, and pandemonium.

It took a moment to gather her courage, but she spoke up nevertheless. "Excuse me, ma'am? I couldn't help but notice you were very busy. I -" Avra grit her teeth together, clenching and then unclenching her hands. It was barely a half a second pause. "I'd love to help you, if you're, uh, able to allow that? All I'd ask is some food at the end of the night."

Madam Bursina paused mid-plate-juggle and seemed to notice Avra speaking to her. “What’s that darlin’? You’ll have to speak up! It’s a rowdy night in here, and after enough of those, my hearing ain’t what it used to be!” Her voice was rough and boisterous; perhaps less feminine, but grand and, well, jolly. She didn’t seem agitated by having to devote attention to Avra, in fact she smiled and spoke with a polite tone, but she did resume her work without so much as a pause to wait for an answer.

Avra cleared her throat and then all-but-yelled it. "I'd like to offer my help! As a job, at least for tonight!" Her heart pounded in her chest; she did not like drawing attention to herself, but it seems she was doing as such _endlessly_ today...

“Oh! Well, why didn’tcha say so? Job pays four copper an hour, and you keep your tips.” Avra’s new boss promptly handed her four mugs of ale and gestured to a table of thirsty-looking lumberjacks across the floor from them. “You handle that, and I’ll go grab you an apron. Oh, and what’s your name, darlin’?”

That was... really fuckin' easy. Four copper an hour, was that good or bad? Avra didn't care.

She just nodded. "Oh - I'm Avra!" she said loudly over the din, before making her way to the lumberjacks. She had worked a little bit of retail, but nothing as a waitress.

Still, she smiled charmingly and passed the mugs out before gathering dirty dishes on her way back in the general direction of where she had seen the woman - her boss - go. She worked. There were some learning curves, to say the least. But by the end of the night she had come to her role, figuring it out. This was a job she could do consistently.

It was quiet now, just a few lingering souls. Quiet enough she could find her boss and talk to her. Learning Madam Bursina's name had been almost an accident, but she picked it up.

"Uh, ma'am," she said as she approached with a few more used mugs, "What, uh, what time d'you want me here tomorrow? Oh, and, uh, could I buy myself dinner here?" She smiled awkwardly as she looked up at the woman, her voice back to its normal, quiet tones.

“Course, darlin’. I’ll bring you somethin’. You want an ale?” Madam Bursina stretched and made her way back to the kitchen. It was perhaps the first time Avra had seen her at anything shy of top speed. She didn’t look tired, though. She came back shortly with a plate of stir-fry Avra had been eyeing earlier. The meat smelled positively heavenly, though she couldn’t put her finger on just what it was. “Or are you more of a milk kinda girl? Either way, I gotcha covered for two copper for both the meal and your drink.”

"Milk sounds great, actually. Um..." Avra grabbed two copper from her pocket of tips, then let them fall back. "Take it from my pay?" She nearly added 'check' to it, but realized she didn’t even know if this world _had_ checks. She happily sat down with the food, digging in. It tasted as great as it smelled, and she closed her eyes and hummed in contentment. This was... nice. But it still left the question. "So, Madam Bursina... what time do you need me here tomorrow...?"

Madam Bursina was still considering her answer when the tavern door opened again and several guards entered, accompanied by a pale-looking young woman. Upon meeting her eyes, the woman pointed to Avra and said, “That’s her.”

The guards surrounded Avra. “Miss, were you in the market earlier this afternoon?” asked one with a more impressive moustache.

She did not, in fact, do anything wrong. She stiffened, anyway, knowing that law was often unjust and that judgments were cast before reason.

"Uh, yes?" She sat there, with the food, a frown on her face. The crate was broken. She didn't touch anyone. What lie was being spread... what unknown law did she break?

“And were you involved in an incident between Oran Thorne and his then-owner?” The guards stood stock still. When he mentioned Oran Thorne, Madame Bursina stiffened.

"I... don't know who Oran Thorne is," or anything about owners, "but I did see an... incident today, yes." Fuck. She needed to... figure some way out of this. "Did... I do something wrong...?" She knew it was bad, she knew it was bad, fuck fuck fuck...

The guard with the moustache turned to a heavier, older companion, who nodded, then turned back as the other guards moved to grip Avra by the arms. “Miss, I’m afraid you’re under arrest for interfering with the treaty of Hydra’s Pass. Take her away.”


End file.
